A map showing the extended former landfill site outlined in green. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

We need a skatepark. We need a playgrounds for West Side kids. We need to remember that this is a neighborhood that can’t handle throngs of out-of-town visitors.

Red Bank residents offered those and other suggestions as the process of shaping a new waterfront park out of the former town dump got underway with a community brainstorming session last Thursday night.

With planning underway to transform the former Red Bank landfill at West Sunset Avenue into an 8.6-acre park, the borough Parks & Rec Committee has scheduled a “concept design kickoff” to solicit public input on the project.

Mayor Pasquale Menna with engineer Christine Ballard of T&M Associates at the incinerator site last Friday. (Click to enlarge)

The work of finally pulverizing Red Bank’s 70-plus-year-old incinerator smokestack to dust could begin as soon as tomorrow.

But replacing the stack and adjoining garbage dump, both long out of service, with a pristine 8.5-acre park overlooking the upper Navesink River may still be years from beginning, borough officials acknowledge.

They don’t know, for starters, if there are drums of waste buried around the incinerator, and will have to x-ray the ground to find out, borough engineer Christin Ballard says.

Even if tests come up clean, though, local officials may face strong objections from neighbors of the West Sunset Avenue property, some of whom envision nothing but trouble at the dead end of their street if a park is created there.

“I’m just afraid that’s going to be a hangout,” Marcelle Seruby, a senior citizen and West Sunset resident for over 50 years, told redbankgreen recently. “I just feel that it’s unsafe for us. The police have enough to do.”

Contractors working on improvements to a nearby intersection are using the borough-owned lot as a staging area. A wooden form for making concrete slabs was built at center, and a load of stone was dropped closer to the river.

A publicly owned parcel of riverfront property that redbankgreen calls Whatchamacallit Park appears on its way finally to getting a new moniker: Maple Cove.

But that tidbit of news was all but swamped at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Red Bank council, when tempers flared over who’s doing what on the Navesink River site.

Theft occurring between 8-9-08 and 8-10-08 at Rector Place. Victim reported that unknown person broke into a shed in back yard and stole a black metal Sears tool box filled with tools. Ptl. George Travostino.